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Okay Here'sa the official unofficial word of what happened with the bans and suspensions from an GM on the inside which wants to remain nameless.
On August 19th without warning Blizzard made a small addition to the warden client that sniffed around your PC while you were online playing. No one knew about it because it was a Friday that they inplimented it and not on the regular Tuesday. Many people may remember a server restart that day.
This happened server side only as well. The people who put out 3rd party software did not get the memo about it till the bans and suspensions rolled in. By then it was too late.
Why would Blizzard do this to so many paying customers even if they were using illegal 3rd party software is it because they want to keep things fair?
The answer is no. It turns out that Blizzard saw their numbers from the sale of the actual box game take a huge decline in the last quarter. They chalked this up to people buying accounts off ebay that were and other auction sites. They saw a huge increase in the number of these sale due to people botting accounts all the way to 40 - 60 and selling them. Thus declining the sale of the actual game.
So Blizzard decided to get tough on the botting cimmunity so from August 19th - August 21th or so they ran the new Warden Client without anyone noticing. On August 22nd they started sending out suspensions to anyone suspected of using third party sofatware that was not authorized. If you were banned it meant they caught you outright and had proof of the offence. If you were suspended it meant they think they got you but could not be 100% sure. So just a ban to scare people.
After this they staggered the emails so it seemed like they were still catching people who were using 3rd party software. The bans came via IP though using a folder in WoW to detect all account use3d on that PC. So if someone used 3rd party software on your PC you recieved a letter even if you were not the person using the bot. Measures taken to scare people into stop using the bot. The final number:
1. 1500 people were banned and another 2000 suspended between August 19th and whenever for using 3rd party software.
2. They estimate that they lost over 47k dollars from banning people alone. The comment was who cares. They make 4 million a month in subscriptions.
3. Unauthorized 3rd party software will still not be tollerated but the checks have stopped after the 21st.
4. Even if you didn't use the 3rd party software on the days in question it is still possible that it was found on your machine and got you caught anyways.
Anyways that is what I have been told and that's what seems to be the case. He said that they will let up from here on out but needed to send a message and make examples.
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